Movies

THE NAUGHTY NINETIES (1945) has Budd and Lou working on a riverboat under the happy captaincy of Henry Travers (Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life) until a trio of riverboat gamblers get their hands on the boat and turn it into a grift mill. A stock plot that could almost have been a straight historical drama, but anything with “Who’s on First?” is worth catching (the book Abbott and Costello in Hollywood reveals that keeping the crew from breaking into laugher during the performance was a major problem). “I’m not asking you who’s on second!”
FOUR MEN AND A PRAYER (1938) has British officer C. Aubrey Smith framed for allowing Indian tribesmen to arm themselves for an insurrection, then murdered just when he hoped to prove the real villains were an international arms syndicate (a stock villain of the era between the World Wars). Can his sons—womanizing flyboy David Niven, college student William Henry [edited to correct for right actor], diplomat Richard Greene and barrister George Sanders—clear his name? A fun adventure, with John Carradine, Loretta Young and Alan Ladd in the supporting cast. “I know the moment she hears my voice her room will be bathed in brilliant sunlight.”
I watched the 2002 version of THE TIME MACHINE (2002) as research for my film-book proposal and found it less than impressive, as a 19th century scientist first tries to avert the tragedy that cost him the woman he loves, then travels into the future in the hopes advanced knowledge will explain why changing the past is impossible. The future, unfortunately, is very bland—the Morlocks (lead by sneering Jeremy Irons) might as well be orcs. Not the last bad film I’ll see for this project, though. “You are forgetting one thing—what if?”
MAN ON WIRE (2008) is an excellent film about Philippe Petit, who walked a tight-rope between the World Trade Center towers back in 1974 (“MAN ON WIRE” was part of the police charge afterwards). This portrays Petit, an amateur tightrope walker, as dreaming of crossing the towers from the moment he learned they were under construction (he made previous walks between the towers of Notre Dame and a building in Sydney), though the execution proved much tougher than expected. Apparently it also changed both him and the friends who helped him as they all sensed a change in him that led to them separating. “Two men in business suits, carrying heavy equipment, hiding behind boxes—there would be no excuse.”